I've created four walk cycles, one each of Right and Left sideways walks for both Male01 and Female01 puppets.

I placed the .caf files for the male walk cycles in the HoC_Walks/Data/Puppets/Male01/Animations/Gaits folderand the .caf files for the female walk cycles in the HoC_Walks/Data/Puppets/Female01/Animations/Gaits folder.

It is throwing exceptions while trying to build the gait from the animations. I think it may not be getting to the later animation after throwing while building earlier ones, which might be why putting one bad one in stops the working one from working. Maybe.Although, that said, both of the ones in the addon linked to dont build into gaits correctly.

I still think it might be to do with the animations making forward progress; might be worth trying adding a little forward motion to the animations.

It is throwing exceptions while trying to build the gait from the animations. I think it may not be getting to the later animation after throwing while building earlier ones, which might be why putting one bad one in stops the working one from working. Maybe.Although, that said, both of the ones in the addon linked to dont build into gaits correctly.

I still think it might be to do with the animations making forward progress; might be worth trying adding a little forward motion to the animations.

I believe I did but I've tried so many things, , who knows.

I'll try it again this evening.

Sango: "If it was really a miracle everyone would have been saved."

Vargas: "But if everyone was saved how would anyone know it was a miracle."

Sango and Vargas arguing over the implications of one person surviving an unexpectedly active tidal season.

The problem is happening because one of the animation tracks doesnt have any keyframes after the guy puts his left foot down so that it contacts the floor (at about 1.5 seconds into the anim).

I've not sure which track this is, but I do note that you have very little (posibly none at all) animation on the upper body and arms. It might be worth trying having some animation for each arm, and for the head. It probably doesnt have to be anything much, but nothing at all might be breaking it.

Edit: Think I found a code fix to stop this from breaking things, but I'm afraid it isnt going to make todays patch, so you will need to actually animate the upper body a bit so that the keyframes dont all get discarded because they are identical, causing the animation reordering to fail.

The problem is happening because one of the animation tracks doesnt have any keyframes after the guy puts his left foot down so that it contacts the floor (at about 1.5 seconds into the anim).

I've not sure which track this is, but I do note that you have very little (posibly none at all) animation on the upper body and arms. It might be worth trying having some animation for each arm, and for the head. It probably doesnt have to be anything much, but nothing at all might be breaking it.

Edit: Think I found a code fix to stop this from breaking things, but I'm afraid it isnt going to make todays patch, so you will need to actually animate the upper body a bit so that the keyframes dont all get discarded because they are identical, causing the animation reordering to fail.

That makes sense. I've only been keyframing the lower body changes for most of the attempts, leaving upper body keyframing for the first and last frame, and keyframing the root translations to get the correct foot to stay put when its told.

The hell is in the details.

Edit: Just a note, the puppet seems to pivot into position for the sideways walks which I'm guessing is because it's stepping forward codewise to a side stepping posiition?

I may not be able to overcome that on my end and if not, I'll likely not release this as an addon unless someone requests it and understands the limitations.

I don't know how easy/hard it would be on your end to add the sideways first steps for each direction but I'm assuming even then that my animations would still only be able to draw from the forward walk default?

Sango: "If it was really a miracle everyone would have been saved."

Vargas: "But if everyone was saved how would anyone know it was a miracle."

Sango and Vargas arguing over the implications of one person surviving an unexpectedly active tidal season.

I've not sure which track this is, but I do note that you have very little (posibly none at all) animation on the upper body and arms. It might be worth trying having some animation for each arm, and for the head. It probably doesnt have to be anything much, but nothing at all might be breaking it.

Ok, I tried keyframing a small upper torso bend to a left and right walk animation. One translated forward a bit. The other backward.

Neither one worked.

Then

I created a very simple left and right walk, both with upper body twists and arms swinging lightly.

I tried that with neither root translating forward then I tried with both of them translating forward.

I just added a copy of the addon to my dropbox where I edited one of the animations to add a few rotations to the leg joints along a different axis.

Now that one moves forward, has shoulders, elbows, spine, hips and knees all rotating to several keyframes and I've made certain both upper and lower body are in constant motion over the entire course of the 60 frames.

The issue with the keyframes is that Moviestorm culls duplicate keyframes, which occure when a bone is in the same position from one frame to the next. Normally one doesnt need a keyframe when there is no change in position; this substantially reduces the memory footprint of the animations which are loaded.

The problem, however, is that this keyframe reduction doesnt work well with the walk cycle reordering - the walk animation is changed within Moviestorm so that it starts at the moment the left foot hits the ground, with the bits from before that added on after the rest of the anim.

Presumably it will break if any of the body sections dont have any keyframes: each leg, each arm, and the head.

With regard to the pre-walk, ie the bit as they start to walk, the problem is that it doesnt blend with the correct prewalks, as your animation is not in an expected direction. There are pre-walk animations that start walks in the relevant directions, but they wont be used, as Moviestorm doesnt know that your walks are special.

The anims in the addon in post 34 have a different problem to the ones that I tried the previous day.

These are failing in a bit of code that is trying to determine the lowest points, ie where the footfalls occur. The comment in the code says:

// Find those frames in the animation where the feet are at their // lowest points - notional stationary points when this cycle gets // bent along a spline. Additional constraint ( used when connecting // the prewalk phase to the cycle phase ) is that when stationary // the other leg must be trailing.

This StrafeRight animation doesnt have the character moving their feet properly (the legs pass through each other).

So:At the point where the left foot is lowest, the right foot needs to be behind the left foot, and vice versa. I think the problem is that in this anim is not lifting up the feet correctly, and they not lowest when the foot is down.

// Find those frames in the animation where the feet are at their // lowest points - notional stationary points when this cycle gets // bent along a spline. Additional constraint ( used when connecting // the prewalk phase to the cycle phase ) is that when stationary // the other leg must be trailing.

That may explain something.

When a character is walking sideway for every other step one leg is in front of the other.

Somehow I need to find a way to have the leg that is in motion starting behind the stationary leg.

Since I've had it working I can only assume that its possible.

Something to note: For the animations that work,where the character is walking sideways, if I manipulate the walk path in the middle the footfall circle points in the direction of motion with the footprints facing perpendicular to the direction of the arrow.

Is it going by the foot bone?

If so, if the in-motion foot bone accidentally drops below the stationary one could that cause this?

Sango: "If it was really a miracle everyone would have been saved."

Vargas: "But if everyone was saved how would anyone know it was a miracle."

Sango and Vargas arguing over the implications of one person surviving an unexpectedly active tidal season.

When a character is walking sideway for every other step one leg is in front of the other.

It worked with your previous example, I think, where you were actually animating the steps in a sensible way.

QUOTE

Somehow I need to find a way to have the leg that is in motion starting behind the stationary leg.

Since I've had it working I can only assume that its possible.

Something to note: For the animations that work,where the character is walking sideways, if I manipulate the walk path in the middle the footfall circle points in the direction of motion with the footprints facing perpendicular to the direction of the arrow.

Is it going by the foot bone?

If so, if the in-motion foot bone accidentally drops below the stationary one could that cause this?

It is a bad bad thing if the in motion foot is lower than the stationary one; there is code that tried to find where the foot is 'down' and it is basing it on the position being lowest and the foot not moving forwards. If there are no suitable points where both of these happen, it isnt a valid walk cycle animation.

Basically, walk cycles are very unfriendly to test animations - all the body needs to be animated, and the feed need to do a convincing walk, with something resembling ground contacts.